Review: Star Trek: Strange New Worlds Season 3 Episode 5 “Through the Lens of Time”
Strange New Worlds takes a dark turn as what should be an exciting archaeological discovery turns out to introduce a darkness far different than anything we’ve seen in the show thus far.
The Fountain of Evil
Dr. Roger Korby (Cillian O’Sullivan) is on the Enterprise as he prepares for the most exciting archaeological dig of his career. On the planet Vezda, home of the M’Kroon, a recent dig at a native heritage site uncovered what he and others think could be the secret to eternal life, a sort of fountain of youth, presumably, created by ancient aliens. It’s a potential discovery that could fundamentally reshape the way everyone thinks of death.
The away team initially consists of Dr. Christine Chapel (Jess Bush), who is leading the Starfleet party, Nyota Uhura (Celia Rose Gooding), and Beto Ortegas (Mynor Luken). The latter two characters are continuing their flirty relationship as Beto works on creating a documentary about the Federation, which includes recording the Enterprise’s adventures. Later on, Spock (Ethan Peck) and La’an Noonien-Singh (Christina Chong) join the away team, and let’s not forget those two have been seeing each other casually since the previous episode. Joining the party is a red shirt N’Jal (Ish Morris), a native whose species has quite the stake in the pending discovery.
Rounding out the team is Ensign Gamble (Chris Myers), the young medic recently permanently assigned to the Enterprise at Dr. M’Benga’s request. Gamble, as we have seen, is quite excited to be assigned to the Enterprise, and this episode even gives him his own log recording that relates how he is living his dream. That’s… uh… not a good sign.
There’s sciencing to be had, and the team soon uncovers a huge, ancient alien structure, a palace of some kind hidden within a rock wall. In a scene that vomits out an obscene amount of exposition, the similarities between the palace and artifacts Korby found on a nearby planet suggest the M’Kroon might very well be the descendants of a race that, according to Chapel and Korby, could have traveled across multiple galaxies and even attained immortality thanks to quantum instabilities at a molecular level. It’s a bold claim, and one that certainly poses intriguing questions for the Milky Way’s curious minds.
Upon entering the palace, the group is greeted by visitors – graverobbers, specifically, who apparently starved centuries ago after getting trapped in the palace. As the ranking member of the away team, Spock correctly asserts the mission’s threat level is high now. But then he suffers an absolute collapse of logic and responsibility as he allows Chapel, who asserts how important the dig is to her, Korby, the planet’s native species, and science generally, to continue the mission without alerting the ship. Shame on you, Spock.
Besides Spock’s abdication of responsibility, why couldn’t Chapel recognize Starfleet protocol was clear in this situation? Alerting the Enterprise to the dead bodies didn’t have to mean the mission was canceled. Why didn’t La’an speak up as the security officer and assert proper safety procedures be followed? As it is, Chapel and Spock should feel absolutely responsible for what happens to the team next.
The graverobbers’ bag shows some intriguing archaeological artifacts, and the all-too-eager medical ensign takes a gamble by picking up a strange orb, which glows and promptly explodes in the poor man’s face. It’s a bit gruesome as Gamble’s eyes are blown out of his head and he is transported back to the Enterprise.
The away team sticks around inside the structure long enough to discover a register, a record with thousands of names. Following that is another discovery: Beto, not shy about doing things on his own in an unfamiliar and dangerous environment, decides to send his flying camera through a mysterious archway in the room. The drone records a beautiful, crystallized statue of some kind in the next room, which spooks N’Jel enough to send him running to the exit – and to his death by lasers that pop out of nowhere to disintegrate him.
Trapped in the structure, the team decides to traverse the mysterious doorway, and end up separating into what turns out to be different quantum variations of the room in which they entered the structure. The away team, while able to communicate, is separated into pairs: La’an and Chapel, Beto and Uhura, and Korby and Spock. For the former’s part, they discover the pretty statue that scared N’Jal exists in both their reality and different realities, which seemingly confirms their theory about the ancient aliens being able to harness molecular structures in different quantum states.
Spock and Korby, meanwhile, discover a stone tablet on the dead graverobbers that indicate the structure they are trapped in is something like a prison for evil spirits – not exactly the kind of immortality the team was hoping to find. Spock even gets a glance at one such spirit that is trapped in one of thousands of glowing orbs – the kind of orb that injured Gamble – and what the Vulcan sees is strikingly reminiscent of the evilness he sensed in Batel in “Shuttle to Kenfori.” Thanks to this new evidence, the team makes the creepy but intriguing hypothesis that the structure they are in is a prison that houses sentient evil from across the galaxy.
Finally, Beto and Uhura realize, thanks to Beto’s drone, that the three pairs are co-existing in the same room, but in different realities. (There’s a lot of science we let roll off our backs when watching shows like Star Trek, but having Beto’s AI-powered drone able to capture all three pairs of people from different realities didn’t pass the straight-face test for us.) They use the pedestal in the room as a dropbox for each other, which allows Chapel to use alien artifacts held by Uhura and Korby to align the various quantum realities and return the away team to the same reality. This is all well and good, but why didn’t the team ensure none of them were standing in the same spot when they returned to the same quantum reality?
The last challenge the team faces before leaving the structure is how to access the entrance, which is separated from them by a gulf of space. Spock realizes the reality in which they now exist suffers from actions essentially moving backwards, meaning the team will have to take a giant leap of faith and try walking over empty air so the bridge to the entrance can form. It’s a scene much like in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, and unfortunately the episode doesn’t play with this neat sci-fi concept anymore than allowing the away team to exit the evil hellhole prison. Korby, much to his chagrin, has no relic, artifact, or souvenir to keep from what otherwise is a remarkable discovery.
An Evil Awakens
While the away team is trapped in the structure, Dr. M’Benga (Babs Olusanmokun) is attending to the young man to whom he has taken a liking. Besides unusual symptoms like his eyes being unable to regenerate, and that his brain actually registers as being inactive, Gamble soon starts to display concerning behavior, like creepily and uncharacteristically asking M’Benga about his daughter, Rukiya, whom M’Benga never told Gamble about. The change in demeanor, as well as Gamble’s lack of eyes, present the image of a creepy, evil entity lurking within the medic – which, actually, is exactly what is happening.
“Do you think that woman who came to you was really your daughter, or do you think it was something wearing her skin, something that drank her tears and fed off her screams?”
– Gamble to M’Benga, saying something that really only a demon would say.
Captain Marie Batel (Melanie Scrofano), who is generally on the mend following the risky infusion of Gorn DNA into her body, finds herself all-too-conveniently coming face-to-face with Gamble, and something within the captain activates, needing to attack whoever or whatever Gamble is becoming. The two fight a bit before Gamble retreats from sickbay, kills a crewmember, and holds another hostage. M’Benga, a soft-spoken, somewhat fatherly figure to Gamble, talks him down, as the creature within Gamble backs off long enough for the medic to be taken to the brig.
The brig, however, does jack all once the demon is back in control of Gamble, and the young man kills his guard and makes his way to the science lab, where Sam Kirk (Dan Jeannotte), Montgomery Scott (Martin Quinn), and Pelia (Carol Kane) are working on analysing the orb that exploded in front of Gamble. Pelia, who, let’s remember, is hundreds of years old and has seen her fair share of the galaxy, ultimately senses an evil presence within Gamble – as she did with the orb that destroyed his eyes – and fatally shoots him, which releases the evil energy controlling him. Luckily, Scotty traps the creature in the transporter buffer for future study.
Better in Theory Than Execution
The knowledge of a multi-dimensional prison is an intriguing premise, one that “Through the Lens of Time” really only hints at. At the end of the episode, Pike notes how Starfleet is working with the natives to set up a security zone around the now-revealed ancient prison. Consider this: if those thousands of evil beings were released, what would happen to the galaxy? We’re super-curious for the Enterprise crew to learn more about the evil spirit stored in the transporter buffer, and just why Batel reacted so fiercely to the entity inhabiting Gamble. And of course, there’s a tease in the final seconds of this episode that hint that the entity is somehow infecting the Enterprise’s computers. Seems like a time bomb waiting to happen.
Unfortunately, “Through the Lens of Time” is better in concept than execution. The episode was fairly slowly paced, leading to the scenes in the monotonous prison to drag as the away team slowly discovered new aspects of their predicament. Throughout it all, clunky writing relying too much on exposition dumps made the plotline lose whatever edge it had going for it, and subpar VFX work didn’t do a great job bringing the prison to life. Gamble’s role in this episode was the highlight, with Chris Myers doing a commendable job portraying an optimistic young man who was dealt a terrible hand, and seemingly set in motion unspeakable things to come.
Finally, let’s talk about Pelia. We feel she is not contributing much to the show in this season. Sure, she has once or twice taught Scotty some lessons about being a good engineer, but she’s uncharismatic, rude, and unfairly harsh. In this episode, she awkwardly cuts off Scotty for no apparent reason from explaining something to Pike, and she delivers a horribly-timed joke at the end of the episode that completely undermines the seriousness of the developing dark situation the crew have uncovered. Her character has very little to do this season, and when she is on screen, it’s not an enjoyable experience. If her role in the overarching Strange New Worlds story is to allow Scotty to develop into his own, we hope it happens sooner than later.
Ultimately, “Through the Lens of Time” leaves us hoping Strange New Worlds can better explore in the future the intriguing ideas it has presented to viewers. And despite the episode’s quality, it will undoubtedly be a foundational installment for one of the overarching stories of this season – namely, Batel’s struggle with an inner evil, and the evil that now infects the Enterprise.
Stray Thoughts:
- A bit of a technical nitpick… why does Beto’s camera, which should be far more advanced than any camera today, only records at 30FPS, as indicated on the camera’s user interface?
- Beto explains how his AI-powered camera pays closer attention to subjects that are displaying unusually high emotions – which in turn later allows the camera to see all the away team members in their respective quantum realities. What a strange way to try and capture documentary footage. How does the camera discern which high emotions it should capture? What if the room is packed with highly emotional people?
- The entire time M’Benga was attending to Gamble, he never changed out the poor man’s bloody shirt?
- The ship went to red alert even before Gamble left the brig. How did he get to the science lab without being confronted or captured?
- Gamble goes to the science lab and holds Pelia, Kirk, and Scotty hostage because he wants senior officer command codes, which he can then use to take over the ship from engineering. Before this scene, we just saw Gamble escape the brig. How did he know to find the chief engineer in the science lab? Why didn’t he go to the bridge to try and control the ship? Why not go back to sickbay and get the codes from M’Benga?
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